Case Management Workforce Supporting People With Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities: Indications of a New Frontier of the Workforce Crisis.

The team talked to 42 case managers in one U.S. state. All worked with adults who have intellectual or developmental disabilities.

They asked open questions about why people leave the job. They also looked at hiring data for two years.

One in four case managers quit every year. Low pay and heavy paperwork were the top reasons.

New hires were hard to find. Many left within six months.

Finke et al. (2017) saw the same burnout in UK community teams. Both studies show ID staff feel buried in forms.

Lee et al. (2009) found the same high-effort, low-reward pattern in Taiwan. The stress looks the same across countries.

van der Miesen et al. (2024) pulled 200 papers and still could not find strong data on how case-manager turnover hurts client outcomes. Our field is flying blind.

If your agency loses a quarter of its case managers each year, service plans stall and families wait. Push for smaller caseloads, higher pay, and a clerk to handle forms. Measure how long it takes to assign a new case manager after someone quits. Share that number with funders—data gets budgets changed.